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IBM RT/PC
The RT/PC (short for RISC Technology Personal Computer), codenamed 032 during development, was a family of workstation computers first released by IBM in 1986. They were IBM's first commercialized computers to be based on a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architecture. Its proprietary ROMP (R'esearch '''O'PD 'M'icro'P'rocessor) CPU was based on the pioneering technologies used in the experimental 801 minicomputer developed by IBM Research. Two basic form-factors were produced; the 6150 (floor tower) and the 6151 (desktop). Why it had Failed #IBM had '''little to no faith in the RT/PC, so their support for it was quite lacking. #The RT/PC, because of its name, had lead people to believe that it is part of the Personal Computer line. IBM even thought that it was a high-end PC. #The sales commission structure that IBM gave the RT/PC was far too similar to those for the sale of a regular PC. With typically configured systems selling for up to $20,000 USD, it proved to be a hard sell, and the lack of any reasonable commissions lost the interest of IBM's sales force. #Software suppliers were slow to adopt the RT/PC, due to a lack of software packages, and IBM's lackluster support for the AIX operating system, along with sometimes unusual changes from the traditional de facto UNIX standards. Why it was Crummy #Its performance, when compared to its contemporaries, wasn't all that hot. #Its floating-point capabilities were abysmal. #*This was further scandalized by the discovery of a bug within the floating-point square root routine. #The RT/PC's performance, combined with its price ranges, meant that it had a poor price-performance ratio. Redeeming Qualities #The RT/PC did well as an interface system between IBM's larger mainframes, due to its SNA and DS support, as well as some of its point-of-sale terminals, store control systems, and machine shop control systems. #It found a home mostly in the CAD/CAM and CATIA markets, with some inroads into the scientific and educational areas, especially after the announcement of AOS and substantial discounts for the educational community. #The RT/PC had forced an important stepping-stone in the development of the X Window System. A group at Brown University had ported X version 9 to the RT/PC. Complications reading unaligned data on the system necessitated an incompatible protocol change, leading to the introduction of X version 10 in late 1985. Trivia *The RT/PC found usage in the backbone of the Internet's predecessor, the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). From July 1988 to November 1992, the NSFNET's T1 backbone network used routers built from multiple RT/PCs (typically nine at a time) that are interconnected by a token ring LAN. *The ROMP was the very first commercialized RISC-type CPU. *The AIX operating system was IBM's second foray into UNIX, the first being PC/IX for the PC. *The IBM 6152 Academic System's RISC Adapter Card uses the ROMP-C, an improved version of the ROMP CPU based on 1μm CMOS technology which would go on to be used in later models of the RT/PC series. The RISC Adapter Card allows the 6152 to run ROMP software that is compiled for AOS. External Links *Wikipedia article *IBM RT/PC at Old-Computers.com *IBM RT 6150 at GradyOwens.us *IBM announcement letter no. 186-006 Category:Computers Category:United States Computers Category:North American Computers Category:Workstations Category:IBM Category:1980s